We set sail on the ms Oosterdam on Jan. 5, 2008. Things got off to a rocky start. First of all, the weather wasn't cooperating. There was light rain upon our arrival in San Diego. We arrived pier side in San Diego around noon and discovered we couldn't board the ship until after 4 PM. Apparently there had been a viral outbreak and they had to "scrub down" the ship. For this inconvenience they credited us $10 pp on our shipboard account. Towards 4 PM, there were 1800 people crammed into the pier building. A lot of people were looking for places to sit. Once onboard everyone was required to sanitize their hands and there were hand sanitizers positioned everywhere on the ship. At the buffet / drink stations you weren't allowed to serve yourself. They had attendants serving you. Needless to say this slowed down the process, however on the upside, no one in my party got sick. Better to be safe than sorry.
We had a mini suite on deck 6. When we entered, we noticed that the balcony door had been propped open. We could tell that someone had been smoking in the room. The room was clean, minus the cigarette odors. Yuck. Our travel agent had ordered a bottle of champagne for us, however the bottle was not on ice and there were no champagne flutes for us. The ice bucket was also missing along with the glasses. I also saw that the robes were missing as well as the fresh flowers that are normally in the suites. The flowers never arrived, however the champagne was put on ice on the 3rd day and the flutes miraculously appeared. The ice bucket, glasses and bathrobe arrived on the 3rd day as well. Wasn't the 5 star as advertised, but probably had something to do with the top to bottom cleaning they were doing on Saturday.
In the mini suite, we had a small refrigerator, which was nice to have and it had a small LCD television with several channels, including CNN, Discovery, TNT and Cartoon Network. There were 2 sinks as well as a Jacuzzi bathtub and a small walk in shower. The shower had barely enough room for one person. There were plenty of storage spaces in the room. The balcony was also decent sized with a table and plenty of chairs. Too bad the weather didn't cooperate. During the sea days, it was always too cold to sit outside. The first couple of days, the cushions were wet from the rain. The room steward was efficient and cordial. Everything we asked for, he took care of. Some of the complaints we had, probably couldn't be helped.